Discover The Most Positive Colour

Innovation

Posted
June 25, 2018

Discover The Most Positive Colour

Beautifully designed, expertly engineered and technologically advanced, the car is an incredible invention. But driving doesn't always have the same wonder. Our roads are grey, the skies often are too, and the most common colours for our four-wheeled miracles are black, white, and grey! Unsurprisingly, this can hurt our mental state. Along with colour psychologist Angela Wright, an EEG headset and a biometric glove, we set out to find a more positive colour.

"People often think that colour is just about how something looks, but there's far more to it than that.”

Angela Wright, Colour Psychologist

Working with Gravity Thinking and the Alphabet collective, we made a biometric glove that could quickly and accurately monitor changes in people's emotions - from stress to boredom, excitement, interest, relaxation and focus. We also hooked them up to a heart rate monitor that ran a tiny amount of electricity through the skin to get a galvanic skin response - basically, how much people were sweating, which we could track to a tenth of a second. A number of people were hooked up, in a large room flooded with an ever-changing rainbow of colour.

We time-stamped the colour changes to the reactions and then started to look for patterns. People reacted most strongly to reds, greens and blues, but the colour that induced the most positivity was a mixture of indigo and blue. When people encountered it, they became relaxed as well as strongly focused and engaged.

"Time and time again, blue comes out on top when people are asked their favourite colour. A lot of people instinctively reach for blue. It calms the mind."